A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 28

[Footnote 669: _Ibid._, Vol. 2, p. 308.]

It is not easy to determine from his correspondence just what was in Seward's mind from the first to the thirteenth of December, but it is plain that he was greatly disturbed. Nothing seemed to please him.

Weed's articles perplexed[670] him; his colleagues distrusted[671]

him; the debates in the Senate were hasty and feeble;[672] few had any courage or confidence in the Union;[673] and the action of the Sumner radicals annoyed him.[674] Rhodes, the historian, says he was wavering.[675] He was certainly waiting,--probably to hear from Lincoln; but while he waited his epigrammatic criticism of Buchanan's message, which he wrote his wife on December 5, got into the newspapers and struck a popular note. "The message shows conclusively," he said, "that it is the duty of the President to execute the laws--unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right to go out of the Union--unless it wants to."[676]

[Footnote 670: "Weed's articles have brought perplexities about me which he, with all his astuteness, did not foresee."--F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 480.]

[Footnote 671: "Our senators agree with me to practise reticence and kindness. But others fear that I will figure, and so interfere and derange all."--_Ibid._, p. 480.]

[Footnote 672: "The debates in the Senate are hasty, feeble, inconclusive and unsatisfactory; presumptuous on the part of the ill-tempered South; feeble and frivolous on the part of the North."--_Ibid._, p. 481.]

[Footnote 673: "All is apprehension about the Southern demonstrations.

No one has any system, few any courage, or confidence in the Union, in this emergency."--_Ibid._, p. 478.]

[Footnote 674: "Charles Sumner's lecture in New York brought a 'Barnburner' or Buffalo party around him. They gave nine cheers for the pa.s.sage in which he describes Lafayette as rejecting all and every compromise, and the knowing ones told him those cheers laid out Thurlow Weed, and then he came and told me, of course."--Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 308.]

[Footnote 675: "While the evidence is not positive that Seward contemplated heading a movement of Republicans that would have resulted in the acceptance by them of a plan similar in essence to the Crittenden compromise, yet his private correspondence shows that he was wavering, and gives rise to the belief that the pressure of Weed, Raymond, and Webb would have outweighed that of his radical Republican colleagues if he had not been restrained by the unequivocal declarations of Lincoln."--James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 3, p. 157.]

[Footnote 676: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 480.]

On December 13 Seward received the desired letter from the President-elect, formally tendering him the office of secretary of state. The proffer was not unexpected. Press and politicians had predicted it and conceded its propriety. "From the day of my nomination at Chicago," Lincoln said, in an informal and confidential letter of the same day, "it has been my purpose to a.s.sign you, by your leave, this place in the Administration. I have delayed so long to communicate that purpose, in deference to what appeared to me a proper caution in the case. Nothing has been developed to change my view in the premises; and I now offer you the place in the hope that you will accept it, and with the belief that your position in the public eye, your integrity, ability, learning, and great experience all combine to render it an appointment pre-eminently fit to be made."[677]

[Footnote 677: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 349.]

In the recent campaign Seward had attracted such attention and aroused such enthusiasm, that James Russell Lowell thought his magnanimity, since the result of the convention was known, "a greater ornament to him and a greater honour to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been."[678] Seward's friends had followed his example. "We all feel that New York and the friends of Seward have acted n.o.bly," wrote Leonard Swett to Weed.[679] A month after the offer of the portfolio had been made, Lincoln wrote Seward that "your selection for the state department having become public, I am happy to find scarcely any objection to it. I shall have trouble with every other cabinet appointment--so much so, that I shall have to defer them as long as possible, to avoid being teased into insanity, to make changes."[680]

[Footnote 678: _Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1860; _Lowell's Political Essays_, p. 34.]

[Footnote 679: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

301.]

[Footnote 680: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

In 1849, Seward had thought the post of minister, or even secretary of state, without temptations for him, but, in 1860, amidst the gathering clouds of a grave crisis, the championship of the Union in a great political arena seemed to appeal, in an exceptional degree, to his desire to help guide the destinies of his country; and, after counselling with Weed at Albany, and with his wife at Auburn, he wrote the President-elect that he thought it his duty to accept the appointment.[681] Between the time of its tender and of its acceptance Seward had gained a clear understanding of Lincoln's views; for, after his conference with Weed, the latter visited Springfield and obtained a written statement from the President-elect. This statement has never appeared in print, but it practically embodied the sentiment written Kellogg and Washburn, and which was received by them after Seward left Washington for Auburn.

[Footnote 681: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, pp. 481, 487.]

With this information the Senator returned to the capital, stopping over night at the Astor House in New York, where he unexpectedly found the New England Society celebrating Forefathers' Day. The knowledge of his arrival quickly reached the banqueters. They knew that Weed had seen Lincoln, and that, to hear the tidings from Springfield, Seward had travelled with his friend from Syracuse to Albany. Eagerly, therefore, they pressed him for a speech, for words spoken by the man who would occupy the first place in Lincoln's Cabinet, meant to the business men of the great metropolis, distracted by the disturbed conditions growing out of the disunion movement, words of national salvation. Seward never spoke from impulse. He understood the value of silence and the necessity of thought before utterance. All of his many great speeches were prepared in a most painstaking manner. But, as many members of the society were personal or political friends, he consented to address them, talking briefly and with characteristic optimism, though without disclosing Lincoln's position or his own on the question of compromise. "I know that the necessities which created this Union," he said, in closing, "are stronger to-day than they were when the Union was cemented; and that these necessities are as enduring as the pa.s.sions of men are short-lived and effervescent. I believe that the cause of secession was as strong, on the night of November 6, when the President and Vice President were elected, as it has been at any time. Some fifty days have now pa.s.sed; and I believe that every day the sun has set since that time, it has set upon mollified pa.s.sions and prejudices; and if you will only await the time, sixty more suns will shed a light and illuminate a more cheerful atmosphere."[682]

[Footnote 682: New York _Times_, December 24, 1860.]

This speech has been severely criticised for its unseemly jest, its exuberant optimism, and its lack of directness. It probably discloses, in the copy published the next morning, more levity than it seemed to possess when spoken, with its inflections and intonations, while its optimism, made up of hopeful generalities which were not true, and of rhetorical phrases that could easily be misapprehended, appeared to sustain the suggestion that he did not realise the critical juncture of affairs. But the a.s.sertion that he predicted the "war will be over in sixty days" was a ridiculous perversion of his words. No war existed at that time, and his "sixty suns" plainly referred to the sixty days that must elapse before Lincoln's inauguration.

Nevertheless, the "sixty days prediction," as it was called, was repeated and believed for many years.

The feature of the speech that makes it peculiarly interesting, however, is its strength in the advocacy of the Union. Seward believed that he had a difficult role to play. Had he so desired he could not support the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line, for the President-elect had ruled inflexibly against it; neither could he openly oppose it, lest it hurry the South into some overt act of treason before Lincoln's inauguration. So he began exalting the Union, skilfully creating the impression, at least by inference, that he would not support the compromise, although his hearers and readers held to the belief that he would have favoured it had he not submitted to Lincoln's leadership by accepting the state department.

During Seward's absence from Washington he was placed upon the Senate committee of thirteen to consider the Crittenden compromise. It was admitted that the restoration of the Missouri line was the nub of the controversy; that, unless it could be accepted, compromise would fail; and that failure meant certain secession. "War of a most bitter and sanguinary character will be sure to follow," wrote Senator Grimes of Iowa.[683] "The heavens are, indeed, black," said Dawes of Ma.s.sachusetts, "and an awful storm is gathering. I am well-nigh appalled at its awful and inevitable consequences."[684] Seward did not use words of such alarming significance, but he appreciated the likelihood of secession. On December 26 he wrote Lincoln that "sedition will be growing weaker and loyalty stronger every day from the acts of secession as they occur;" but, in the same letter, he added: "South Carolina has already taken the att.i.tude of defiance.

Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have pushed on to the same att.i.tude. I think that they could not be arrested, even if we should offer all you suggest, and with it the restoration of the Missouri Compromise line."[685] To his wife, also, to whom alone he confided his secret thoughts, he wrote, on the same day: "The South will force on the country the issue that the free States shall admit that slaves are property, and treat them as such, or else there will be a secession."[686]

[Footnote 683: William Salter, _Life of James W. Grimes_, p. 132.

Letter of December 16, 1860.]

[Footnote 684: New York _Tribune_, December 24, 1860.]

[Footnote 685: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 485.]

[Footnote 686: _Ibid._, p. 486.]

Nevertheless, the Republican senators of the committee of thirteen, inspired by the firm att.i.tude of Lincoln, voted against the first resolution of the Crittenden compromise. They consented that Congress should have no power either to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without compensation and the consent of its inhabitants, or to prohibit the transportation of slaves between slave-holding States and territories; but they refused to protect slavery south of the Missouri line, especially since such an amendment, by including future acquisitions of territory, would, as Lincoln declared, popularise filibustering for all south of us. "A year will not pa.s.s till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union."[687]

[Footnote 687: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 288.]

Upon the failure of the Crittenden compromise, Seward, on the part of the Republicans, offered five propositions, declaring (1) that the Const.i.tution should never be altered so as to authorise Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the States; (2) that the fugitive slave law should be amended by granting a jury trial to the fugitive; (3) that Congress recommend the repeal by the States of personal liberty acts which contravene the Const.i.tution or the laws; (4) that Congress pa.s.s an efficient law for the punishment of all persons engaged in the armed invasion of any State from another; and (5) to admit into the Union the remaining territory belonging to the United States as two States, one north and one south of the parallel of 36 30', with the provision that these States might be subdivided and new ones erected therefrom whenever there should be sufficient population for one representative in Congress upon sixty thousand square miles.[688] Only the first of these articles was adopted. Southern Democrats objected to the second on principle, and to the third on the ground that it would affect their laws imprisoning coloured seamen, while they defeated the fourth by amending it into Douglas' suggestion for the revival of the sedition law of John Adams' administration.[689]

This made it unacceptable to the Republicans. The fifth failed because it gave the South no opportunity of acquiring additional slave lands.

On December 28, therefore, the committee, after adopting a resolution that it could not agree, closed its labours.

[Footnote 688: Journal of the Committee of Thirteen, pp. 10, 13.]

[Footnote 689: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 484.]

This seemed to Jefferson Davis, who, in 1860, had a.s.sumed the leadership laid down by John C. Calhoun in 1850, to end all effort at compromise, and, on January 10, 1861, in a carefully prepared speech, he argued the right of secession. Finally, turning to the Republicans, he said: "Your platform on which you elected your candidate denies us equality. Your votes refuse to recognise our domestic inst.i.tutions which pre-existed the formation of the Union, our property which was guarded by the Const.i.tution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. You elect a candidate upon the basis of sectional hostility; one who, in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, made a distinct declaration of war upon our inst.i.tutions.... What boots it to tell me that no direct act of aggression will be made? I prefer direct to indirect hostile measures which will produce the same result. I prefer it, as I prefer an open to a secret foe. Is there a senator upon the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your contract?

Whose is the fault if the Union be dissolved?"[690]

[Footnote 690: _Congressional Globe_, pp. 308, 309.]

The country looked to Seward to make answer to these direct questions.

Southern States were hurrying out of the Union. South Carolina had seceded on December 20, Mississippi on January 9, Florida on the 10th, and Alabama on the 11th. Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas were preparing to follow. The people felt that if a settlement was to come it must be made quickly. "Your propositions would have been most welcome if they had been made before any question of coercion, and before any vain boastings of powers," Davis had said. "But you did not make them when they would have been effective. I presume you will not make them now."[691]

[Footnote 691: _Ibid._, p. 307.]

If the position of the New York senator had been an embarra.s.sing one at the Astor House on December 22, it was much more difficult on January 12. He had refused to vote for the Crittenden compromise.

Moreover, the only proposition he had to make stood rejected by the South. What could he say, therefore, that would settle anything? Yet the desire to hear him was intense. An eye-witness described the scene as almost unparalleled in the Senate. "By ten o'clock," wrote this observer, "every seat in the gallery was filled, and by eleven the cloak-rooms and all the pa.s.sages were choked up, and a thousand men and women stood outside the doors, although the speech was not to begin until one o'clock. Several hundred visitors came on from Baltimore. It was the fullest house of the session, and by far the most respectful one."[692] Such was the faith of the South in Seward's unbounded influence with Northern senators and Northern people that the Richmond _Whig_ a.s.serted that his vote for the Crittenden compromise "would give peace at once to the country."[693]

[Footnote 692: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

[Footnote 693: The Richmond _Whig_, January 17, 1861.]

Seward was not unmindful of this influence. "My own party trusts me,"

he wrote, "but not without reservation. All the other parties, North and South, cast themselves upon me."[694] Judged by his letters at this period, it is suggested that he had an overweening sense of his own importance; he thought that he held in his hands the destinies of his country.[695] However this may be, it is certain that he wanted to embarra.s.s Lincoln by no obstacles of his making. "I must gain time,"

he said, "for the new Administration to organise and for the frenzy of pa.s.sion to subside. I am doing this, without making any compromise whatever, by forbearance, conciliation, magnanimity. What I say and do is said and done, not in view of personal objects, and I am leaving to posterity to decide upon my action and conduct."[696]

[Footnote 694: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 494.]

[Footnote 695: "I will try to save freedom and my country," Seward wrote his wife.--F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 487.

"I have a.s.sumed a sort of dictatorship for defence, and am labouring night and day with the cities and States."--_Ibid._, 491. "I am the only hopeful, calm, conciliatory person."--_Ibid._, 497. "It seems to me that if I am absent only three days, this Administration, the Congress, and the district would fall into consternation and despair."--_Ibid._, 497. "The present Administration and the incoming one unite in devolving upon me the responsibility of averting civil war."--_Ibid._, 497.]

[Footnote 696: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 497.]